4-Point Weekend #138
On awareness and practice
Hi everyone,
Please enjoy this week’s 4 points! Have a Happy Easter.
1) Awareness
What you are aware of you are in control of; what you are not aware of is in control of you.
You are always a slave to what you’re not aware of. When you’re aware of it, you’re free from it.
- Anthony De Mello in Awareness
I may hesitate to go as far as De Mello in saying we are free from it.. but with awareness comes recognition, and through recognition we can know and identify the impact something carries. Often, challenges and barriers come in hidden form - or, at least the ones we cannot conquer.
2) On practicing practice
The secret is that everything is always on the line. The more present we are at practice, the more present we will be in competition, in the boardroom, at the exam, the operating table, the big stage.
- Josh Waitzkin in the Art of Learning
If you make your best effort just to contuine your practice with your whole mind and body, without gaining ideas, then whatever you do will be true practice. When you do something, just to do it should be your purpose.
- Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
When we practice, we are practicing much more than just the thing itself.
3) Gratitude for what we don’t have
Even if you don’t have all the things you want, be grateful for the things you don’t have that you don’t want.
- Bob Dylan, advice from his father
4) Quote of the week
“Never say about anything I have lost it, but only I have given it back”
- Epictetus
Thank you for your time and attention.
Much love,
Kyle
Gaining ideas. I read that it is a good idea to look up every word you don't know, when you come across it, in the dictionary, because words are concepts, so you will have enlarged your base of thought. Thinking of Shakespeare, he was not just a poet and a playwright. He coined words for the first time, such as "lonely." That was in his play Coriolanis - "I wandered lonely as a Dragon." People generally dismiss the word gossip as something that is always bad, negative. Not Shakespeare. He used it in its ancient sense, which is godparents. We often talk about people because we care about them.
We can keep learning right into old age, which is a wonderful thing. There is awareness, and then there is awareness. Our dreams come in mystereous forms, yet they have something to teach. A good idea to write them down over time. Mysteries beyond, like synchronicity.